THIS YEAR MARKED the passing of Mick O’Dwyer, 50 years on from when he followed his glittering playing days by commencing the most spectacular management career that spanned decades.
While it was the kind of death that brings a nation to a halt, time soon moves on for all except those left behind.
Speak to his son Karl, and he recalls the day of 3 April and the avalanche of tributes paid all over Ireland and beyond as they face their first Christmas without Micko.
Karl is the most recognisable of his sons, with John and Robbie, along with Micheál (Haulie) who passed away in October, 2022.
He was a discarded Kerry footballer who had a second wind when his father went to Kildare and, together, they fulfilled his potential.
“When it’s the main news on the radio, and every paper in the country has it on its front page there is an element of that alright,” says Karl.
“I know one of the lads on our Kildare team said that Micko was Box Office. That seemed to be the thing that followed him around.
“So it wasn’t a total surprise. It was great to see so many people passing on their good wishes and it made it a little bit easier when it did happen. And we were well prepared for it when it did happen because he hadn’t been in good shape for a period of time.”
Even now, it seems almost a struggle to put what their father meant to some many into some sort of context. The memorable footage of a weeping Pat Spillane as he recorded a podcast for The Irish Independent was stunningly raw.
“When you see Spillane on there, crying, it was genuine obviously,” Karl explains.
“Things like that would hit home just how much he meant to certain people. There was a genuine grief from Pat’s point of view. He admitted that he felt so strongly about what Micko had done for his career.
“And plenty of others, a good few lads around the country that felt Micko didn’t give him a break and that’s the other side of management as well.
“But he was successful with the people that he did have time for. And if they didn’t make it down for the funeral, they would have contacted me or the others.”
At an intensely private time, you welcome the well wishers. As private as you’d like it to be, their father was public property, a fact they understood.
As children, with a father managing Kerry and their mother Mary Carmel carrying their various businesses of hotels, restaurants and nightclubs, they were sent off to board in Coláiste Íosagáin in Ballyvourney, Cork.
They maintained the connection by travelling home to work at the family business when their schedules allowed, but it also gifted them with a sense that there was a wider world out there.
Right now, Robbie is the manager of Nemo Rangers.
Robbie O'Dwyer, manager of Nemo Rangers. Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
When Micko became Kildare manager for a second time, the idea was floated to Karl that he might join him in a Lilywhites adventure. After all, he was one of the several that silently bore the blame for the Kingdom’s defeat to Clare in the 1992 Munster championship.
Going to Kildare, both men were on a hiding to nothing. Decades before it became a thing, he could have been labelled a Nepo Baby.
And yet, together they delivered the Leinster title in 1998, their first since 1956, and beat All-Ireland champions Kerry in the All-Ireland semi-final before losing to Galway in the final.
From playing no county football for five years, Karl O’Dwyer was chosen as an All-Star at right corner-forward in 1998.
“I was disappointed I wasn’t on the Kerry panel around those years but I suppose Páidí (Ó Sé) had won a couple of Under-21s with Kerry and there was a lot of good young lads coming through and he probably put his faith in them. And they were right for him,” he recalls.
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“But I did play a lot of good football around that time. I was playing with UCC and we were beaten in a county final one year, I was Player of the Year for my club for two years around that time in the mid-90s.
“So I was always hoping that I would get another crack at Kerry but unfortunately it never happened. So he asked if I would come to Kildare and see how it goes and I said ‘Absolutely, sure Jeez why not?’”
Karl and Mick O'Dwyer in the Kildare days. James Meehan / INPHO
James Meehan / INPHO / INPHO
If it were now, with the wall to wall coverage and social media stuff, he might leave it off. He’ll also admit that when he first played for Kildare he wasn’t in the best condition and he could easily have been discarded under someone else.
“But he knew what I was capable of, maybe more so than what I thought myself,” he says.
“I got into shape and that was one thing he always had with teams I was involved with; he always knew how to get teams right on the day. He got me right fitness-wise and things just took off around March-April-May of ’98 and we had a good year after that.
“He took a huge gamble (on me), but lookit, he didn’t really care. His reputation was cemented in many ways, but he never really cared what people thought. Never did.”
His methods have passed into legend. Part psychological profiling, part slogging and flogging with exhausting training sessions.
When he was preparing Kerry for the 1975 Munster final against Cork, he trained his team on 27 consecutive nights. He admired the likes of Mikey Sheehy, but wondered what Sheehy could become if he crushed him hard enough to open his fist and see a diamond.
He got his answer. And with that, he saw no need to deviate from a successful formula that turned Laois into a provincial-winning county, and later Wicklow into the most treacherous team to meet in the backdoor.
“I wouldn’t have been half the player I was, if I hadn’t done the training that he made us do. It wasn’t enjoyable, I can tell you that. It was hard work. There was laps, sprints, wire to wires,” says Karl.
“But it made us mentally stronger as well as physically stronger.
The one thing he managed to do, was to have teams ready on the big day. You always felt in the best shape.
“Now, his methods were old-style. Or today they are. But back then you weeded out a lot of the lads who didn’t want it and those that did want it they got their rewards, if they were willing to put in the effort. And we had a bit of success off the back of it.”
Karl O'Dwyer holds off Éamonn Fitzmaurice in the 1998 All-Ireland semi-final. Billy Stickland / INPHO
Billy Stickland / INPHO / INPHO
This was an era when you could have three weeks or even a month between games. Players could socialise, go out and have a few drinks together, before recovering and putting in serious work with the time to do it.
The greatest gift any father could bestow on a son is their time. Not everyone gets that. When Karl made the decision to go to Kildare, he got any amount of that.
He moved up to Kildare in September 1997 and got a job in Rathangan, signing up for club duties there too. But as the summer stretched out for the young teacher, there were multiple Thursdays when he would head back down the road to Waterville and jump in behind the bar of the family business for a couple of nights before returning for a Sunday morning training.
“Especially during the summer where we would have had the nightclub, the hotel and the restaurant would have still been going strong. So I would have been home nearly every weekend I was able to get home,” he says.
South Kerry is different now. When he was growing up he won two south Kerry championships when clubs had proper picks and there were eight minor teams playing in the regional championships.
“Our nightclub would have been there, there was another nightclub in the Bay View Hotel which would have had bands every Sunday night, the likes of Christy Moore, Daniel O’Donnell and all the big bands and people coming from all around Caherciveen, Sneem, all over with buses into it,” he says.
“And now there are only a couple of pubs. There is no real night scene. Killarney and Tralee or the only places you could get a decent nightclub now. It was a lot more vibrant when we were younger.”
But even a thriving business couldn’t cage Micko. When most of his peers reached for the Werther’s Originals and Countdown phase, he found himself in a Wicklow jacket on the sidelines of Croke Park beating Kieran McGeeney’s Kildare in 2008, before a three-week spell in July when they beat Fermanagh, Cavan and Down in backdoor games played in Aughrim when he didn’t use a single substitute.
“I was at the games Wicklow played, the nights against Down and so on. The crowds in Aughrim, sure the place was packed to the rafters and it was great,” says Karl.
“You had a county there that was starved of success. And he loved that. He loved the underdog and loved proving people wrong.
Micko celebrating a typical giant-killing with KIldare. Presseye / Mark Pearce/INPHO
Presseye / Mark Pearce/INPHO / Mark Pearce/INPHO
“I remember when he went to Laois, people thought, ‘Jeez Micko, what are you at?’
“And then when he went to Wicklow, it was the same. But he loved being told he was wrong and proving people wrong. He was doing it all his life. He did it as a player, as a manager, and the satisfaction he got meant he wasn’t past it and that’s what drove him on.”
That obsession has been passed down, though through a filter. Karl himself has managed clubs in Kildare, Wicklow, Laois and Carlow and his school, Confey College to provincial honours.
Now with St Lawrence’s where his wife Sandra has been club secretary for years, he managed his sons Dylan and Pearse at underage level. Football is central to their lives, but there is room for other things as well.
Karl O'Dwyer managing Stradbally in Laois. Evan Treacy / INPHO
Evan Treacy / INPHO / INPHO
“Nobody would have the addiction that fella had,” he laughs about his father.
“We were brought up on it. I remember at the Christmas table every year, myself and the three lads and Micko would be talking football and my mother would say, ‘Would you ever shut the feck up? Can we have one day of the year where we don’t discuss football?’ And she wouldn’t win that argument either.
“I was involved in the minors there in St Lawrence’s where my own young lads are playing. It is a drug, I don’t drink or smoke or whatever. Football was something I wanted to give a go.
“Now, I wouldn’t have been a slave to it the way he was although some people might disagree with me on that. Robbie is the same, it is a religion down in Nemo. Once you are in Nemo it is like Hotel California, you can check out, but you can never leave.”
But as he mentioned his late mother Mary Carmel, it is worth recalling her own sporting tastes.
“She never watched us playing football!” he says with that inherited chuckle of his.
“She went down to the football field one day and my brother Haulie would have been on the sideline. We were playing and the only reason she went down was one of the barrels was leaking above in the bar and Micko was gone away somewhere and she wanted Haulie to come up and fix the barrels.
But she never watched us playing, never went to Croke Park. She went to Croke Park one day to see Dad and she got claustrophobic and had to leave.
“Now, she would have had an opinion on it in the sense that if anyone said anything bad about us, or she felt around the time that I wasn’t getting a run with Kerry, she would have let it be known that she felt I was getting a raw deal.
“But she never spoke much football or had much interest in it.
“Which is a good thing. The business was so successful and that’s because she was running it and we had a pub and a restaurant and a nightclub and she was able to run after it and she did a great job. She was a fantastic woman in that sense.”
The first year of someone passing away is one of firsts. They will reflect on the old times down in Kerry. There is more grieving to be done, there always is, but especially when your initial process was so public, Micko’s funeral becoming a national event.
“There is a pride there,” he insists.
“Proud to be a son of that man. And I remember the week after he died, Kildare played Westmeath in an opening of Newbridge in the first round of Leinster and they did a presentation out in the middle of the field and I went out and there was a standing ovation.
“Now it wouldn’t have been for me but his picture was in the corner and the players were lined up.
Mick O'Dwyer's picture appears on a screen in St Conleth's Park, Newbridge. Billy Stickland / INPHO
Billy Stickland / INPHO / INPHO
“There are moments like that when it gets you. It really hits home that, number one that he is gone and number two, especially in a county where he had great success that people showed him respect and remembered him for what he was. I think that was a moment that I will remember and appreciated it on the day.
“It was the one moment when I got really emotional after he died. There wouldn’t have been too many other times, but that was the moment alright, when it was hard to keep the emotions in check.”
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'Proud to be a son of that man' - Karl O'Dwyer remembers his father, Micko
THIS YEAR MARKED the passing of Mick O’Dwyer, 50 years on from when he followed his glittering playing days by commencing the most spectacular management career that spanned decades.
While it was the kind of death that brings a nation to a halt, time soon moves on for all except those left behind.
Speak to his son Karl, and he recalls the day of 3 April and the avalanche of tributes paid all over Ireland and beyond as they face their first Christmas without Micko.
Karl is the most recognisable of his sons, with John and Robbie, along with Micheál (Haulie) who passed away in October, 2022.
He was a discarded Kerry footballer who had a second wind when his father went to Kildare and, together, they fulfilled his potential.
“When it’s the main news on the radio, and every paper in the country has it on its front page there is an element of that alright,” says Karl.
“I know one of the lads on our Kildare team said that Micko was Box Office. That seemed to be the thing that followed him around.
“So it wasn’t a total surprise. It was great to see so many people passing on their good wishes and it made it a little bit easier when it did happen. And we were well prepared for it when it did happen because he hadn’t been in good shape for a period of time.”
Even now, it seems almost a struggle to put what their father meant to some many into some sort of context. The memorable footage of a weeping Pat Spillane as he recorded a podcast for The Irish Independent was stunningly raw.
“When you see Spillane on there, crying, it was genuine obviously,” Karl explains.
“Things like that would hit home just how much he meant to certain people. There was a genuine grief from Pat’s point of view. He admitted that he felt so strongly about what Micko had done for his career.
“And plenty of others, a good few lads around the country that felt Micko didn’t give him a break and that’s the other side of management as well.
“But he was successful with the people that he did have time for. And if they didn’t make it down for the funeral, they would have contacted me or the others.”
At an intensely private time, you welcome the well wishers. As private as you’d like it to be, their father was public property, a fact they understood.
As children, with a father managing Kerry and their mother Mary Carmel carrying their various businesses of hotels, restaurants and nightclubs, they were sent off to board in Coláiste Íosagáin in Ballyvourney, Cork.
They maintained the connection by travelling home to work at the family business when their schedules allowed, but it also gifted them with a sense that there was a wider world out there.
Right now, Robbie is the manager of Nemo Rangers.
When Micko became Kildare manager for a second time, the idea was floated to Karl that he might join him in a Lilywhites adventure. After all, he was one of the several that silently bore the blame for the Kingdom’s defeat to Clare in the 1992 Munster championship.
Going to Kildare, both men were on a hiding to nothing. Decades before it became a thing, he could have been labelled a Nepo Baby.
And yet, together they delivered the Leinster title in 1998, their first since 1956, and beat All-Ireland champions Kerry in the All-Ireland semi-final before losing to Galway in the final.
From playing no county football for five years, Karl O’Dwyer was chosen as an All-Star at right corner-forward in 1998.
“I was disappointed I wasn’t on the Kerry panel around those years but I suppose Páidí (Ó Sé) had won a couple of Under-21s with Kerry and there was a lot of good young lads coming through and he probably put his faith in them. And they were right for him,” he recalls.
“But I did play a lot of good football around that time. I was playing with UCC and we were beaten in a county final one year, I was Player of the Year for my club for two years around that time in the mid-90s.
“So I was always hoping that I would get another crack at Kerry but unfortunately it never happened. So he asked if I would come to Kildare and see how it goes and I said ‘Absolutely, sure Jeez why not?’”
If it were now, with the wall to wall coverage and social media stuff, he might leave it off. He’ll also admit that when he first played for Kildare he wasn’t in the best condition and he could easily have been discarded under someone else.
“But he knew what I was capable of, maybe more so than what I thought myself,” he says.
“I got into shape and that was one thing he always had with teams I was involved with; he always knew how to get teams right on the day. He got me right fitness-wise and things just took off around March-April-May of ’98 and we had a good year after that.
“He took a huge gamble (on me), but lookit, he didn’t really care. His reputation was cemented in many ways, but he never really cared what people thought. Never did.”
His methods have passed into legend. Part psychological profiling, part slogging and flogging with exhausting training sessions.
When he was preparing Kerry for the 1975 Munster final against Cork, he trained his team on 27 consecutive nights. He admired the likes of Mikey Sheehy, but wondered what Sheehy could become if he crushed him hard enough to open his fist and see a diamond.
He got his answer. And with that, he saw no need to deviate from a successful formula that turned Laois into a provincial-winning county, and later Wicklow into the most treacherous team to meet in the backdoor.
“I wouldn’t have been half the player I was, if I hadn’t done the training that he made us do. It wasn’t enjoyable, I can tell you that. It was hard work. There was laps, sprints, wire to wires,” says Karl.
“But it made us mentally stronger as well as physically stronger.
“Now, his methods were old-style. Or today they are. But back then you weeded out a lot of the lads who didn’t want it and those that did want it they got their rewards, if they were willing to put in the effort. And we had a bit of success off the back of it.”
This was an era when you could have three weeks or even a month between games. Players could socialise, go out and have a few drinks together, before recovering and putting in serious work with the time to do it.
The greatest gift any father could bestow on a son is their time. Not everyone gets that. When Karl made the decision to go to Kildare, he got any amount of that.
He moved up to Kildare in September 1997 and got a job in Rathangan, signing up for club duties there too. But as the summer stretched out for the young teacher, there were multiple Thursdays when he would head back down the road to Waterville and jump in behind the bar of the family business for a couple of nights before returning for a Sunday morning training.
“Especially during the summer where we would have had the nightclub, the hotel and the restaurant would have still been going strong. So I would have been home nearly every weekend I was able to get home,” he says.
South Kerry is different now. When he was growing up he won two south Kerry championships when clubs had proper picks and there were eight minor teams playing in the regional championships.
“Our nightclub would have been there, there was another nightclub in the Bay View Hotel which would have had bands every Sunday night, the likes of Christy Moore, Daniel O’Donnell and all the big bands and people coming from all around Caherciveen, Sneem, all over with buses into it,” he says.
“And now there are only a couple of pubs. There is no real night scene. Killarney and Tralee or the only places you could get a decent nightclub now. It was a lot more vibrant when we were younger.”
But even a thriving business couldn’t cage Micko. When most of his peers reached for the Werther’s Originals and Countdown phase, he found himself in a Wicklow jacket on the sidelines of Croke Park beating Kieran McGeeney’s Kildare in 2008, before a three-week spell in July when they beat Fermanagh, Cavan and Down in backdoor games played in Aughrim when he didn’t use a single substitute.
“I was at the games Wicklow played, the nights against Down and so on. The crowds in Aughrim, sure the place was packed to the rafters and it was great,” says Karl.
“You had a county there that was starved of success. And he loved that. He loved the underdog and loved proving people wrong.
“I remember when he went to Laois, people thought, ‘Jeez Micko, what are you at?’
“And then when he went to Wicklow, it was the same. But he loved being told he was wrong and proving people wrong. He was doing it all his life. He did it as a player, as a manager, and the satisfaction he got meant he wasn’t past it and that’s what drove him on.”
That obsession has been passed down, though through a filter. Karl himself has managed clubs in Kildare, Wicklow, Laois and Carlow and his school, Confey College to provincial honours.
Now with St Lawrence’s where his wife Sandra has been club secretary for years, he managed his sons Dylan and Pearse at underage level. Football is central to their lives, but there is room for other things as well.
“Nobody would have the addiction that fella had,” he laughs about his father.
“We were brought up on it. I remember at the Christmas table every year, myself and the three lads and Micko would be talking football and my mother would say, ‘Would you ever shut the feck up? Can we have one day of the year where we don’t discuss football?’ And she wouldn’t win that argument either.
“I was involved in the minors there in St Lawrence’s where my own young lads are playing. It is a drug, I don’t drink or smoke or whatever. Football was something I wanted to give a go.
“Now, I wouldn’t have been a slave to it the way he was although some people might disagree with me on that. Robbie is the same, it is a religion down in Nemo. Once you are in Nemo it is like Hotel California, you can check out, but you can never leave.”
But as he mentioned his late mother Mary Carmel, it is worth recalling her own sporting tastes.
“She never watched us playing football!” he says with that inherited chuckle of his.
“She went down to the football field one day and my brother Haulie would have been on the sideline. We were playing and the only reason she went down was one of the barrels was leaking above in the bar and Micko was gone away somewhere and she wanted Haulie to come up and fix the barrels.
“Now, she would have had an opinion on it in the sense that if anyone said anything bad about us, or she felt around the time that I wasn’t getting a run with Kerry, she would have let it be known that she felt I was getting a raw deal.
“But she never spoke much football or had much interest in it.
“Which is a good thing. The business was so successful and that’s because she was running it and we had a pub and a restaurant and a nightclub and she was able to run after it and she did a great job. She was a fantastic woman in that sense.”
The first year of someone passing away is one of firsts. They will reflect on the old times down in Kerry. There is more grieving to be done, there always is, but especially when your initial process was so public, Micko’s funeral becoming a national event.
“There is a pride there,” he insists.
“Proud to be a son of that man. And I remember the week after he died, Kildare played Westmeath in an opening of Newbridge in the first round of Leinster and they did a presentation out in the middle of the field and I went out and there was a standing ovation.
“Now it wouldn’t have been for me but his picture was in the corner and the players were lined up.
“There are moments like that when it gets you. It really hits home that, number one that he is gone and number two, especially in a county where he had great success that people showed him respect and remembered him for what he was. I think that was a moment that I will remember and appreciated it on the day.
“It was the one moment when I got really emotional after he died. There wouldn’t have been too many other times, but that was the moment alright, when it was hard to keep the emotions in check.”
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dwyer Karl ODwyer Micko Remembering Micko